


Oh, the places you'll go

by taizi



Series: Momochi Naruto [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Families of Choice, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 17:26:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11514027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: Naruto’s earliest memories are of fire, and a quiet voice, and hands that let him go.‘Cursed,’people in the street whisper as he walks by, and they might be right.“Then the three of us are cursed together,” Haku will always say, as soft as snowfall and every bit as lovely. “And what a lucky curse that is.”





	Oh, the places you'll go

 

 

 

 

 

It’s the beginning of October and he’s not quite five years old when Naruto wakes up in a room full of smoke. It itches his eyes and makes him cough, and he kicks his blanket off. As cold as it was when he went to sleep it’s too  _hot_ now.

“Wake up,” he says, nudging the warm body next to his, “Gaara, wake up.”

A soft sound is his only answer, his friend shifting sleepily against the pillow, and Naruto stands up on their thin futon, pulling on Gaara’s hand until he’s standing up, too.

There isn’t time to do more than wonder  _where did everyone go?_  before the door they’re never allowed to touch flies open and a tall figure comes in.

Heat comes in with him, and a dark-orange glow from the hall, and Gaara is coughing but Naruto lifts his free arm to be picked up – worried but not quite scared yet, and relieved because he knows this half-masked man who kneels on their threadbare blanket to lift them up and away.

There are snowflakes in his short hair, caught in the roughness of his coat. Naruto presses the side of his face against the crisp coldness and the smell of outside, squeezing Gaara’s fingers to make sure he’s still there, as the man moves across the room to the window and opens it up wide.

A moment later they’re outside and striding across the yard. The house burns behind them and Gaara watches it go with solemn almond-shaped eyes. Naruto watches the snow instead, delighting in the impossibly small puffs that drift right into the bare hand he sticks out to catch them.

“Where are we going, Sharky?” he asks when they’ve been walking long enough that he can’t hear the snap and snarl of the house anymore.

“Home, brat,” comes the grumpy reply. “Why, you got somewhere else to be?”

Naruto giggles, because that was a silly question, and Sharky holds him just a little bit tighter.

 

 

 

 

They’ve never been this far from the house before, never been  _outside_ in as long as Naruto can remember, and to make it even better Haku is waiting for them down the road. Naruto shouts in glee and squirms to be put down, and only makes it four running steps before the older boy is suddenly right there and plucking him right off the ground and hugging him close.

Naruto is tucked under a soft chin, curtained by a spill of long brown hair, and hugs back with all the might his little body can afford.

“Those assholes straight up and  _left ‘em_  there,” Sharky is muttering. “If they weren’t dead already, I’d kill ‘em again for that.”

“They got what they deserved,” kind Haku says coldly, and presses a kiss to Naruto’s forehead in the same breath.

Naruto is just about five and just old enough to know that while Sharky and Haku sometimes sound mean, they are both much kinder than those other people from that house they’re leaving behind. Those people always sounded nice and smiled big, but Naruto was afraid of their hands.

 

 

 

 

The city is endlessly bright and Naruto stares at all the people passing by, at the carts and the cars and the mechanical arm that lifts to let foot traffic across the train tracks.

“Your eyes are gonna pop out of your head if you keep that up,” Sharky says with a short laugh that sounds more like a bark. Gaara looks worried for him and Naruto looks up at Haku.

“Will they really?”

Haku smiles. “If they do, I’ll put them right back in. Look all you want, Naruchan.”

And so he looks. There are stores with signs that shine in the dark and stalls on the street that spill food smells as they walk by. Everywhere there’s a steady hum of human bodies moving and human voices talking and more of anything than he has ever seen before all at once, and Naruto looks and looks and looks.

 

 

 

 

The building they go into is huge, but the inside is very small. An apartment complex, Haku explains patiently. A big house made up of lots and lots of little houses, where lots of people live independently of one another.

Sharky says, “It ain’t much,” but Naruto and Gaara run the length of the apartment and dart in and out of the rooms and jump up on the sofa to press their faces to the window. It’s  _very_ much, as far as they’re concerned, and much better than their old room for sure.

“Settle down, you two,” Haku chides gently, sitting between them. “Are you hungry?”

Naruto is  _always_ hungry, and Gaara promptly says so. Sharky barks another laugh, and Haku smiles even though he looks a little sad.

“Well, let’s see what we can do about that.”

Naruto eats two whole cups of instant noodles, and he’s never had them before today but now they’re his  _favorite_. He falls asleep right there at the crooked table in that tiny kitchen, with Gaara beside him and Haku and Sharky talking quietly over their heads while the sun comes up outside.

 

 

 

 

He grows up in that tiny apartment. He has three brothers and scars that fade and a place to run home to. He was someone else before, but he’s Momochi Naruto now.

 

 

 

 


End file.
